scott wrote:

> Ah, the joy of *extremely* intermittent faults :-)

Indeed!

> Have you looked in the Event Viewer (I think it's called that in XP too) 
> to see what happened when it crashed?
> 
> It seems from your comments that the laptop is still running, just not 
> responding to user input.  Is this the internal mouse and keyboard? Try 
> plugging in an external USB mouse next time it "freezes".

Yeah, "crashed" would seem an exaggeration. More like "suddenly going 
extremely slowly". (IIRC, the CPU graph in Task Manager stops scrolling, 
for example.)

I'm using the internal glide pad. I didn't have a USB mouse with me. I 
guess I could give that a try...

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Darren New wrote:
> Invisible wrote:
>> - On every laptop known to man, holding down the power button will 
>> forcibly power down the laptop. This does not work while the laptop is 
>> frozen. (Fortunately the battery typically dies after ~5 minutes or so.)
> 
> Wow. I was under the impression this was built right into the power 
> supplies. Maybe not on a laptop, tho.

Indeed.

On the other hand, I was *also* under the impression that the cooling 
fan is hardware-controlled. But it turns out to be software-controled. (!!)

I discovered this while trying to install SUSE on my dad's ancient brick 
of a laptop. The install kept failing in bizare and unexplained ways. 
Until I picked up the laptop and almost burnt my hand off!

We rebooted the laptop, and as soon as the BIOS screen showed up, the 
fans started spinning like mad. We waited for them to slow down. (It 
took a while.) Then we resumed the installation attempt. Same problem. 
No matter how hot the laptop got, no fans.

The solution in the end was quite simple. Reboot with the laptop hot. 
The fans spin up to full power. Rather than waiting for them to stop, 
just start installing. The fans remained at full speed until the system 
soft-reset onto the new kernel. After that they appeared to work "normally".

GO. FIGURE.

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> We rebooted the laptop, and as soon as the BIOS screen showed up, the fans 
> started spinning like mad. We waited for them to slow down.

What software was running then while you were waiting?

> The solution in the end was quite simple. Reboot with the laptop hot. The 
> fans spin up to full power. Rather than waiting for them to stop, just 
> start installing. The fans remained at full speed until the system 
> soft-reset onto the new kernel. After that they appeared to work 
> "normally".

I notice when I boot up my Vista box, that every fan runs at full blast 
until some point during Vista boot, whereby first the CPU fan virtually 
turns off, then a few seconds after the desktop appears the GPU fan 
virtually turns off, all I can hear then is just occasional blips of hard 
drive head movement - until I fire up a 3D game, then all hell breaks loose 
again :-)

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scott wrote:
>> We rebooted the laptop, and as soon as the BIOS screen showed up, the 
>> fans started spinning like mad. We waited for them to slow down.
> 
> What software was running then while you were waiting?

The BIOS configuration interface.

> I notice when I boot up my Vista box, that every fan runs at full blast 
> until some point during Vista boot, whereby first the CPU fan virtually 
> turns off, then a few seconds after the desktop appears the GPU fan 
> virtually turns off, all I can hear then is just occasional blips of 
> hard drive head movement - until I fire up a 3D game, then all hell 
> breaks loose again :-)

Interesting. All the fans in my PC just run constantly anyway. The four 
harddrives are just about inaudible.

(I can't believe I have four harddrives...)

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>> What software was running then while you were waiting?
>
> The BIOS configuration interface.

So your conclusion is that the BIOS software controls the fan speed, but for 
some reason SUSE manages to disable this fan speed control function of the 
BIOS?  Or that Windows has its own fan speed control software?

>> I notice when I boot up my Vista box, that every fan runs at full blast 
>> until some point during Vista boot, whereby first the CPU fan virtually 
>> turns off, then a few seconds after the desktop appears the GPU fan 
>> virtually turns off, all I can hear then is just occasional blips of hard 
>> drive head movement - until I fire up a 3D game, then all hell breaks 
>> loose again :-)
>
> Interesting. All the fans in my PC just run constantly anyway.

There should be an option in the BIOS to control the CPU fan speed based on 
temperature, it can be disguised under a number of weird names (I think mine 
is "AI Fan Control" or something stupid like that).

As for the GPU fan (which is far louder on my machine than the CPU fan), it 
seems this is built into the OS/driver.  Actually I don't remember XP ever 
reducing the speed, so maybe it's something new for Vista?

> The four harddrives are just about inaudible.

So are mine when the GPU fan is on!

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scott wrote:
>>> What software was running then while you were waiting?
>>
>> The BIOS configuration interface.
> 
> So your conclusion is that the BIOS software controls the fan speed, but 
> for some reason SUSE manages to disable this fan speed control function 
> of the BIOS?  Or that Windows has its own fan speed control software?

My conclusion is that Windows (and SUSE when it's finished installing) 
controls the fan speed, but the SUSE installation program doesn't.

>> Interesting. All the fans in my PC just run constantly anyway.
> 
> There should be an option in the BIOS to control the CPU fan speed based 
> on temperature, it can be disguised under a number of weird names (I 
> think mine is "AI Fan Control" or something stupid like that).

Possibly I need to install AMD's Cool'n'Quiet driver or something, IDK.

(The idea of a "processor driver" is highly amusing to me. Of course, 
it's not actually a driver for the *processor* at all. It's a driver for 
some of the processor's special features, like frequency scaling, fan 
speeds, power management, etc.)

> As for the GPU fan (which is far louder on my machine than the CPU fan), 
> it seems this is built into the OS/driver.  Actually I don't remember XP 
> ever reducing the speed, so maybe it's something new for Vista?

I don't know. But if I ever get the cash for a more powerful 3D card, 
presumably it'll be far louder. ;-)

>> The four harddrives are just about inaudible.
> 
> So are mine when the GPU fan is on!

I'm just glad there's an indicator light on the front! Unfortunately, 
only one, not one for each HD.

It's a pitty nobody has ever had the forethought to put a network 
activity indicator on the front of the case. (Dell came close - their 
OptiPlex cases have a link light.)

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Invisible wrote:
> OK, so here's a question...
> 
> My sister has an Acer Aspire 5000 laptop. It used to work just fine, but 
> recently it has developed some disturbing symptoms - basically random 
> freezing.
> 

I have an aspire 5100 that did the same thing for about the 1st year 
that I had it.  I tried all sorts of things, but no change.  It would 
freeze with a weird pattern on the screen and nothing would bring it 
back.  I forget if the power button worked or if I had to pull the 
battery to get it to turn off.  It was very annoying as whatever I would 
be working on would be lost.

I tried reinstalling windows, upgrading drivers, the works, no luck.

I gave up on trying to fix it and just saved frequently.

Now it works flawlessly - I don't know what fixed it, and I don't know 
what was wrong, but it doesn't lock up anymore at all.  I can't remember 
the last time it froze.


My guess was the wireless drivers, but I have nothing to substantiate 
it.  Try using it with the wireless turned off and see if that changes 
anything.





Tom

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Invisible wrote:
> On the other hand, I was *also* under the impression that the cooling 
> fan is hardware-controlled. But it turns out to be software-controled. (!!)

Well, keeping it at the selected speed is hardware. Selecting what speed to 
keep it at is software. But I know what you mean.

> No matter how hot the laptop got, no fans.

Most BIOSen I've seen have a flag that says whether you want the OS or the 
BIOS to control the speed.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Why is there a chainsaw in DOOM?
   There aren't any trees on Mars.

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scott wrote:
> I notice when I boot up my Vista box, that every fan runs at full blast 
> until some point during Vista boot,

Most times the BIOS (or whatever firmware is on the gfx card) will set the 
fans to full speed on reset, just for safety.

> all I can hear then is just occasional blips of 
> hard drive head movement 

What confuses me is I can turn on a hard drive that has no activity on it, 
and it'll sit there making little chuckling noises, seeking around and such. 
Like, even a USB drive not plugged into a USB cable will click and seek and 
such.  I'm assuming the firmware is testing the drive or something, looking 
for sectors to spare out, but it' kind of weird.

At least if you let Vista sit for a couple hours, all the background crap 
finishes up and the drive stops working.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Why is there a chainsaw in DOOM?
   There aren't any trees on Mars.

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Darren New wrote:
> Invisible wrote:
>> On the other hand, I was *also* under the impression that the cooling 
>> fan is hardware-controlled. But it turns out to be software-controled. 
>> (!!)
> 
> Well, keeping it at the selected speed is hardware. Selecting what speed 
> to keep it at is software. But I know what you mean.
> 
>> No matter how hot the laptop got, no fans.
> 
> Most BIOSen I've seen have a flag that says whether you want the OS or 
> the BIOS to control the speed.

I guess I just *assumed* that a safety-critical feature like "don't burn 
down my house" would be hard-wired into the device. You know, like how 
your boiler turns off when the house is warm, without needing any 
software. Apparently not...

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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